


Decoding Dean Winchester

by CC_Sestra



Series: Destiel Dribbles [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel Loves Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester Loves Castiel, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Love, M/M, Post-Coital Cuddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-05-02 23:19:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14555745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CC_Sestra/pseuds/CC_Sestra
Summary: Cas tells the story of how he takes care of Dean. Short and sweet.





	Decoding Dean Winchester

It took me a very long time to understand human interactions, and I must confess, I still haven’t mastered it. Sometimes you are supposed to lie, even if the truth is obvious both to you and the person you’re talking to. People can say one thing and mean the opposite, and you are expected to understand it. Smiting demons is easy compared to sarcasm… and to make it even worse, different people come with different sets of rules. Then it’s the endless list of references to pop culture I have no chance of learning, even if I don’t sleep. 

Dean loves those. It’s like he speaks in riddles sometimes. He also comes with a very unique set of rules. I have learnt to pay less attention to words and more attention to everything else. Like when he says he’s fine… it’s almost certain he’s not. He’s told me, more than once, that he doesn’t do cuddling. He really should add “in public” because I have checked the meaning of the word several times and I know he loves it when nobody else is around. There’s a lot he loves, and needs, that he just won’t ask for or even say yes to if I offer it to him. That’s why I stopped asking, at least with words. 

For the longest time I tried to convince Dean that he’s a good person. That he can’t keep blaming himself for exactly everything bad that has happened – ever – and probably everything that will happen, too. That he deserves every bit of happiness anyone – most definitely including me – can give him. He just won’t believe it, and that’s why he keeps trying to push me away. I won’t let him, of course, but I can’t get him to change his perception of himself, either. You know, I’ve been stationed to watch a rock for twenty years once. Rocks are hard to talk to, but I still think I had a better chance convincing it to listen. 

I’ve changed strategies now – with Dean, not with the rock – because Dean has taught me that when one thing doesn’t work, you have to find something else that does. That there is always a way. He just never thought I would apply that to us. 

I once read, or heard, I don’t remember, that if you want children to stop doing something, you can’t just tell them to stop. They will throw tantrums if you do that. Instead, you should give them something else to make them forget about the first thing. I don’t know if it works on children, but it’s very good advice when it comes to Dean. When he tries to push me away with harsh words, or heads straight for the whiskey, I don’t tell him that I want to help or ask him not to drink himself into oblivion because of something he couldn’t have done anything about. I just offer him an alternative.

The thing about Dean is, it’s easier for him if he can pretend it’s me who make him do things that are good for him or make him stop torturing himself. I mean, he knows I would never force him to do anything… but he chooses to forget that sometimes. So when I hold his wrists over his head against a wall and kiss him until he forgets about the guilt and the whiskey and the tiresome emotional self-flagellation (flagellation of any kind is one thing I wish humankind never invented, it’s stupid and horrible and nobody asked them to)… he might pretend he didn’t have a choice because of my angel strength, even though he doesn’t do a thing to try to stop me. I could have the strength of an old lady and it wouldn’t matter.

Sometimes he growls something about that I should stop, but the one time I listened to his words and not everything else, he looked so hurt and lonely that I immediately realized my mistake. These days I just whisper “no” in his ear. He knows what I mean.

No, I won’t stop, because I will never give up on you.

No, I won’t let you sit alone and hate yourself.

No, I won’t stop taking care of you.

And most of all… No, I won’t stop loving you, no matter what you say or do to me.

He always responds almost immediately to the physical reassurance that I’m there, that I want him. I know his body well by now, and I hear it the second his heartbeat speeds up, see the slightest blush, hear how his breath has changed before he knows it himself. I know I see and hear things humans don’t, and in this case it’s very useful. I just keep doing whatever seems to affect him most – and believe me, I know most of these things by now – and I let him pretend he doesn’t need to be comforted as badly as he does, let him pretend this is about pleasure. 

He will make the cutest little sounds (he gets really grumpy when I tell him that, though, like “cute” is a bad thing?) and if I let his hands go, he’ll do things that makes me temporarily forget about why I started what we’re doing in the first place. And if I do my job good enough, he’ll beg. I don’t know why I love that so much, but I guess it’s because it’s the only time he ever asks me to do anything for him in words. 

But the real trick isn’t to offer him sex instead of him resorting to different types of self-harm, because then I might just have replaced one way of numbing the pain for a little while with another (a better one, but still...). Sex is just a way to help him open up, because he’s okay with admitting he wants it (and to be clear, because I don’t lie, it’s also something I enjoy very, very much, with or without the bonus effect). 

No, the most important thing comes afterwards, when I’ve made sure he’s exhausted and smiling with that special glow. When he finally lets me in, when I get to hold him close, when he tells me about what's going on inside that haunted mind of his. 

Sam says it’s nearly impossible to get him to do that, but he can’t do it the way I can.

Dean is amazingly beautiful (another word he has a problem with… there’s so many of them, I sometimes forget) in those moments. He looks younger, not that I care about age. I care about the _reason_ he does. That he relaxes, lets me take care of him, lets his guard down, forgets the fact that he “doesn’t do cuddling”. Once, I even got away with telling him his freckles are so pretty they should be on that list of things humans seem to think are the wonders of the world (like I said, he has a problem with words, and not just using them himself). 

Those moments, they are what really matters, because he actually puts his feelings and thoughts into words. Sure, I almost always know what he’s feeling and thinking anyway – I’ve been decoding Dean Winchester for a long time – but it’s still when he can talk about things that we get even closer. And that’s also when he can heal, just a little tiny bit, because for a short while he believes that he’s loved and that he deserves to be.

I will take anything he throws my way when he’s hurting for those moments.

**Author's Note:**

> Any comments appreciated :)


End file.
